The chronology of 5th century Britain

[Erpingham]

traditions - possibly referring to bardic stories.....?

Poetry, triads?  Certainly stories of fighting magic serpents and children without fathers.

[DBS]

One problem is that in the people we're looking at the Saxons and Scots don't appear to have been literate.

By the time Nennius is writing, they are literate.  They have monastic written material (which being in Latin would be accessible to Nennius) and the Anglo-Saxons have their Chronicle by the stage, but we don't know he spoke English, so that may not be a source he could access..

Nennius is thought to predate the ASC by half a century or so.  Also, just because monasteries have produced stuff does not mean that they are necessarily accessible in other monasteries - it is not as if they had an interlibrary loan service.  We need to be wary of assuming that just because we know that document X existed at this time, that writer Y, at monastery Z, had access to it.

[Erpingham]

One problem is that in the people we're looking at the Saxons and Scots don't appear to have been literate.

By the time Nennius is writing, they are literate.  They have monastic written material (which being in Latin would be accessible to Nennius) and the Anglo-Saxons have their Chronicle by the stage, but we don't know he spoke English, so that may not be a source he could access..

Nennius is thought to predate the ASC by half a century or so. 

Yes, sorry.  Scrub that bit.

Also, just because monasteries have produced stuff does not mean that they are necessarily accessible in other monasteries - it is not as if they had an interlibrary loan service.  We need to be wary of assuming that just because we know that document X existed at this time, that writer Y, at monastery Z, had access to it.

Bad choice of words by me.  Accessible as in a language he could read.  He claims, however, to have read works by English and Scots authors, which suggests he did have things produced in some of the monastic communities in these areas.  The obvious English one would be Bede, as Dave says.

[Imperial Dave]

re the Scots stuff St Columba/Iona would be the obvious at a guess and then latterly Lindisfarne

[Justin Swanton]

traditions - possibly referring to bardic stories.....?

Poetry, triads?  Certainly stories of fighting magic serpents and children without fathers.

Come on, Anthony. Snakes. Children who do not immediately admit their parentage for fear of reprisal. I could argue that the woman looking after Ambrosius cooked up a cock-and-bull story in order to account for there being no father on the scene and she being a virtuous soul. She wasn't prepared to go as far as affirming his daddy was the milkman.

Re his sources he didn't have a mass of material but he had a variety of sources from different backgrounds giving different perspectives, which IMHO enabled him to write an objective history of 9700 words. It won't be accurate to the last detail but nothing suggests it won't be reliable at least in its main facts.

[Jim Webster]

One problem is that in the people we're looking at the Saxons and Scots don't appear to have been literate.

By the time Nennius is writing, they are literate.  They have monastic written material (which being in Latin would be accessible to Nennius) and the Anglo-Saxons have their Chronicle by the stage, but we don't know he spoke English, so that may not be a source he could access..

They were, but the only Saxon sources for this period were oral, as for languages, Bede wrote in Latin, but the Anglo Saxon Chronicle wasn't. The problem it first surfaces under Alfred, and whilst obviously comes from earlier sources, 'academics are still discussing them'

[Imperial Dave]

just a word on facts

we really have to be careful about what we say are facts. we are dealing with events 1500 years ago with very few sources. once we start saying the word fact it leads into the self fulfilling prophecy routine that I have read of soooooo many times when authors suddenly come up with yet another this is the truth of what happened re Arthur. its starts along "i think this might have happened based on this" followed later by "of course as I said earlier this is very likely" ending up with "ta daaaaa!"

we just dont know. we can try to put flesh on the bones of very sparse and often conflicting information but we have to be really careful not to declare that this bit is fact and that bit is fact without an awful lot of cross referencing and archaeological evidence. As a by and by, events tend to be easier to qualify than the mechanisms of what lead to them, what happened afterwards and who did what and why. The why is the worst as it needs accounts of eyewitnesses in the main to help explain something

 

[Erpingham]

One problem is that in the people we're looking at the Saxons and Scots don't appear to have been literate.

By the time Nennius is writing, they are literate.  They have monastic written material (which being in Latin would be accessible to Nennius) and the Anglo-Saxons have their Chronicle by the stage, but we don't know he spoke English, so that may not be a source he could access..

They were, but the only Saxon sources for this period were oral, as for languages, Bede wrote in Latin, but the Anglo Saxon Chronicle wasn't. The problem it first surfaces under Alfred, and whilst obviously comes from earlier sources, 'academics are still discussing them'

The great novelty of the AS Chronicle was that it was, deliberately, in English.  It shows signs of using other prior materials which may have been various list and annals kept by monasteries, in keeping with traditions elsewhere.  How much access Nennius would have had to these if he was in Holyhead must be questioned, though.

[Justin Swanton]

Fine, let's consider it. All yours.

Well, here are a couple of relatively recent items dealing with archaeology that give some idea of how interpreting all this is rather complicated :

https://www.academia.edu/24427173/The_adventus_saxonum_from_an_Archaeological_Point_of_View_How_Many_Phases_Were_There

https://archaeology.co.uk/articles/features/axe-the-anglo-saxons.htm

I'm not saying either of the approaches are right, just that there are different ways of seeing.

Interesting. Christopher Scull affirms that the evidence shows a Saxon presence in Britain from 420-430:

"The refinement of continental site and material culture chronologies against which the earliest continental material in England, and its subsequent development, can be assessed
suggests settlement from the North Sea coastal region from around AD 420/30."

This matches the proposed timetable where Vortigern invites in Hengist & co. around the time of Germanus' arrival in 427.

He also affirms substantial Saxon, Angle and Jute migration later on:

"There is also evidence for two major episodes or processes of intense cultural contact across the Channel and the North Sea which are likely to have involved the movement and substantial settlement of people from outside the frontiers of the former empire: 1) from and along the North Sea coastal regions of the Netherlands and Germany in the second quarter and middle years of the 5th century; and 2) from Norway and south Scandinavia in the middle decades and third quarter of the 5th century"

This would match a Saxon hegemony in Britain from 441 until the major setback at Badon in the 480s.

He does point out the pitfalls of archaeology and trying to make it prove more than it can, e.g. British vs Saxon inhumation practices. Not every grave with weapons is Saxon. Local British likely began to adopt Saxon burial customs - normal in the case of a new, established political authority. I tend to use Zulu words in everyday speech as a matter of course: Eish! Hamba! Aibo! That doesn't make me a Zulu. Nonetheless if local burial customs have aligned to the Saxon model then the Saxons in that area are clearly in charge.

Chris Catling affirms there was no economic collapse in 5th century Britain but rather that eastern England had a thriving economy and trade with lands around the North Sea. That directly contradicts other evidence of a collapse of the Roman economy in Britain from the end of the 4th century. One would need to see the evidence in detail to figure out exactly what happened.

Susan Oosthuizen affirms (which I'd already seen elsewhere) that there was an agricultural continuity from British to Saxon farmlands: the land divisions remain the same and the houses continue to be inhabited as is. That makes sense: the Saxons gradually conquered Britain but each stage of conquest didn't mean that a slew of Saxon settlers arrived in the new territory, evicted the British peasants, and then reorganised the land as they saw fit (much easier for the Saxon farmers just to stay at home - there weren't any population pressures in 6th and 7th century Britain). Newly-conquered territories would continue to be farmed by British peasants now under Saxon overlords, and over time they would, by slow Saxon settlement, intermarriage and cultural shift, eventually identify as Saxons.

Nonetheless she pushes things too far by affirming there was no Saxon invasion or conquest as traditionally understood simply because there is little evidence of a forced resettlement on the farmland. Conquest doesn't mean wholesale annihilation or enslavement of the indigenous population.

[Erpingham]

Come on, Anthony. Snakes. Children who do not immediately admit their parentage for fear of reprisal. I could argue that the woman looking after Ambrosius cooked up a cock-and-bull story in order to account for there being no father on the scene and she being a virtuous soul. She wasn't prepared to go as far as affirming his daddy was the milkman.

Magic realism, eh?  I think I'll go down the traditional route of bardic tale telling.  The story is essentially two things - an allegory/prophesy of eventual British victory and an explanation of how Dinas Emrys was associated with Ambrosius.  You'll be pleased to know that there was a pool at Dinas Emrys   If pusuing the magic realist approach, it may help to know the story of Lludd and Llefelys in the Mabinogion explains how the dragons were captured originally hundreds of years earlier.

[Justin Swanton]

just a word on facts

we really have to be careful about what we say are facts. we are dealing with events 1500 years ago with very few sources. once we start saying the word fact it leads into the self fulfilling prophecy routine that I have read of soooooo many times when authors suddenly come up with yet another this is the truth of what happened re Arthur. its starts along "i think this might have happened based on this" followed later by "of course as I said earlier this is very likely" ending up with "ta daaaaa!"

we just dont know. we can try to put flesh on the bones of very sparse and often conflicting information but we have to be really careful not to declare that this bit is fact and that bit is fact without an awful lot of cross referencing and archaeological evidence. As a by and by, events tend to be easier to qualify than the mechanisms of what lead to them, what happened afterwards and who did what and why. The why is the worst as it needs accounts of eyewitnesses in the main to help explain something

This goes to the heart of the problem. What decides that a fact is in fact a fact? (sorry!) In contemporary research it is the scientific method that decides, but the scientific method works only in fields like biology, chemistry and physics. It formulates a hypothesis and then performs enough experiments to demonstrate whether the hypothesis is true or not. Trouble is you can't do that with history. Virtually all our historical data comes from written primary sources and these sources are human testimonies which cannot be verified by experimentation. Strictly-speaking, as a scientist you have no choice but to discard them all and rely only on scientifically verifiable sources like archaeology for any reliable information on the past. Which leaves us knowing diddly-squat about history.

Meself I take the courtroom approach. All human testimony is a priori to be accepted as true unless it can be proven to be false. Not the other way round. Make every attempt you can to prove the testimony as false but do not discard it simply because it can't be evaluated in a laboratory. For me that approach has paid off in spades.

Re the major sources for 5th century Britain: thus far I have seen no solid evidence that refutes the main events in their accounts. They can be made to chime with each other without forcing any part of their narratives. The arguments against their veracity all seem to add up to mistrusting them from the get-go because that's what you do these days (scientific method and all that). I won't hesitate to reject the existence of Arthur or Ambrosius or Vortigern or Vortimer or their roles in 5th century Britain if solid evidence can be offered that refutes them. Still waiting...

[Erpingham]

My own preference, court room wise, is the balance of probabilities test

The balance of probability standard means that a court is satisfied a fact or event occurred if the court considers that, on the evidence, the occurrence of the fact or event was more likely than not.

It is also, as I understand it, normal to look at the reliability of the evidence, rather than accept all at face value.

[Justin Swanton]

Come on, Anthony. Snakes. Children who do not immediately admit their parentage for fear of reprisal. I could argue that the woman looking after Ambrosius cooked up a cock-and-bull story in order to account for there being no father on the scene and she being a virtuous soul. She wasn't prepared to go as far as affirming his daddy was the milkman.

Magic realism, eh?  I think I'll go down the traditional route of bardic tale telling.  The story is essentially two things - an allegory/prophesy of eventual British victory and an explanation of how Dinas Emrys was associated with Ambrosius.  You'll be pleased to know that there was a pool at Dinas Emrys   If pusuing the magic realist approach, it may help to know the story of Lludd and Llefelys in the Mabinogion explains how the dragons were captured originally hundreds of years earlier.

Nennius affirms that Vortigern was afraid of Ambrosius. He also affirms Ambrosius' mother was alive and that she claimed Ambrosius had no father - a claim Ambrosius himself contradicted, saying his father was a Roman consul. Why had the fact been hidden until then? Gildas affirms Ambrosius parents had both been killed and most likely wore the purple. Nennius affirms that Ambrosius impressed Vortigern so much that the latter changed his mind about killing him and gave him authority in western Britain instead. So Ambrosius did something that really impressed Vortigern. I don't rule out the supernatural in historical accounts (though I don't automatically give it credence either). The baseline for discounting the marvellous in accounts is that "miracles cannot happen." Fine. Now prove it. 

[Justin Swanton]

My own preference, court room wise, is the balance of probabilities test

The balance of probability standard means that a court is satisfied a fact or event occurred if the court considers that, on the evidence, the occurrence of the fact or event was more likely than not.

It is also, as I understand it, normal to look at the reliability of the evidence, rather than accept all at face value.

Sure, but as I understand it, the court requires more than just generic doubt to discount a witness's testimony as improbable: "unless it can be proven to be false"

Anyhow fine, I accept Nennius and Gildas as probably true if their accounts can't be refuted. Moral certitude. Not the same as metaphysical or scientific certitude but good enough to go with.

Edit: this is now the 9th most replied to thread on the forum. Go Pendragon!

[Imperial Dave]

just a note on economic collapse in the time period

we dont know what exactly happens during the 4th and 5th Centuries in Britain re the economy however we can make a few observations:

- Roman Britain relied on a monetary system that used bullion (solidi etc) that had a finite supply and was controlled by the state (ie Rome). This was used to pay the army and also required for payment of taxes. Copper coinage (Siliquae etc) was the everyday coin for local transactions. The one was exchanged for the other. This way the state controlled the flow of money
- by the start of the 5th, new coinage has dried up in Britain.
- by the same time it is implied that 'Roman' soldiers have left Britain either through usurpation or crises
- it is implied that direct control by the Roman state has ended at or around this time (Honorius rescript)

The above is a bit chicken and egg and its hard to unravel but essentially if there is no 'Roman Army' in Britain they dont need bullion coins to pay them and also if Britain is not under direct control it may not be paying any taxes to Rome. How, why and exactly when is up for debate but essentially they all tie up together. What this doesnt do is give you a clear picture of economic activity within the diocese. Trade will happen with or without coinage (money is after all a sub-form or standardised enabler of the barter system) so even though money drops off the radar in this time period it doesnt mean that the economy collapses. Having said that, the mechanism by which the British economic system operated did